U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., chaired a U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee hearing on dyslexia at LSU Tuesday afternoon. The hearing aimed to raise awareness for dyslexia, identify problems in the U.S. education system about dyslexic students and discuss potential solutions.
Cassidy chaired another hearing at the University of New Orleans Tuesday morning on the same topic.
The meetings followed Cassidy’s bipartisan Senate resolution passed Oct. 8, prompting discussion on dyslexia’s educational implications and designating October 2015 as “National Dyslexia Awareness Month.”
Cassidy, whose youngest daughter is dyslexic, said dyslexia is important to him as a parent and as a senator.
“I read once that you can look at core reading rates in third grade and predict how many prison cells you need 20 years later,” Cassidy said.
He said although 20 percent of people have dyslexia, including 80 to 90 percent of children diagnosed with mental disabilities, information is not spread through public policy, and those affected are seldom provided accommodations.
Schools with accommodations for dyslexic students are often too expensive for many to afford, Cassidy added. He praised two Louisiana charter schools currently extending a free curriculum to dyslexic students.
Dr. Bennett Shaywitz, co-director of the Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity, offered a comprehensive illustration of the disability and its implications in a slideshow.
Half of African-American fourth graders are reading below basic levels, compared to 21 percent of white students, Shaywitz said.
“Children of color” and other disadvantaged individuals are more apt to have dyslexia and more likely to go undiagnosed, he said.
“What we have is not a knowledge gap — we have plenty of knowledge — but an action gap,” he said.
Rev. Derrius Montgomery, associate minister at Greater King David Baptist Church, said he grew up with dyslexia in Louisiana, where his disability went undiagnosed until he moved to Atlanta in the sixth grade. He had already been held back twice.
Seventy-one percent of fourth graders and 78 percent of eighth graders are unable to read at grade level — something Montgomery said he found “horrific.”
“When I looked at all the studies and saw some of the main symptoms, the reading, and comprehension piece, that disturbed me,” he said.
Montgomery added most children cannot afford to “pack up and go on to another state” to find the accommodations they need.
Mass communication senior Allyce Trapp sat on the panel to share her successes as a student with dyslexia.
Trapp was diagnosed in the first grade, and Cassidy said he was interested in how she flourished in school.
At Trapp’s high school, a program called Project Read taught students with dyslexia, attention deficit disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder special study habits.
Because she was diagnosed early on in her academic career, Trapp said she caught up to her classmates in reading comprehension by the fifth grade.
“I remember not even learning how to tell time on a watch until the eighth grade, when I was learning Spanish, because I just didn’t learn that,” she said.
Senator Bill Cassidy speaks out on dyslexia Oct. 13, 2015, during a U.S. Senate committee hearing in the Dalton Woods Auditorium.
